Many multiple access schemes have been devised to allow a group of terminals to communicate with a central station using a shared channel. One of these schemes, called random multiple access, relies on randomly transmitted messages from a group of terminals to a central station without perfect coordination between terminals. For example, in a cellular radio environment, each cell is served by a base station communicating with multiple mobile stations. Each cell has the use of a set of radio frequency channels. At least one channel is dedicated for the purpose of setting up radio phone calls in each cell. This "setup" channel is shared by all the mobile stations to communicate with the base station. The setup channel is a full duplex channel with separate frequencies in the forward (base to mobile) and reverse (mobile to base) directions. The forward setup channel is used by the base station to transmit messages to all the mobiles. This channel is a broadcast channel in which all the mobile stations can receive all the messages transmitted from the base station. The reverse channel is a random contention multiple access channel, in which mobile stations may transmit messages to the base station with relatively little coordination. The access is random in the sense that mobile stations are not assigned a fixed transmission schedule. The access is based on contention in which mobile stations with messages to transmit will try to seize channel openings as the appear. If multiple mobile stations decide to transmit at the same time, the messages may collide and mutually destroy each other. There is also a possibility that one of the messages is received with significantly higher power than the others and is correctly received at the base station. In any case the mobile stations whose transmissions are not successful have to retransmit after some random delay.